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Flounder Mode – Kevin Kelly on a different way to do great work
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- pclowes 1y agoThis was a breath of fresh air. The tech sector has grown and changed so much. It has gotten much more "professional" which is arguably good but it this in turn promotes a fair amount of "corporate stooge" behavior. I am guilty here for sure, it is really easy to focus on levels, promo packets, OKRs, especially as you age and responsibility grows and forget what make this industry amazing in the first place. Good reminder to focus on direction and interests and what you feel should be built. Reminds be a bit of the opening section of "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" which I only came across because I liked other Stripe press books. You also meet more interesting and passionate people if you pick a direction vs a destination.
- zebriez 1y agoBrie, author of the profile here. Funny you mention Art of Doing Science and Engineering. There was a footnote to You and Your Research in an early draft but it hit the cutting room floor in edits. (Also, I helped get Stripe Press off the ground–including tracking down rights to Art of Doing Science and Engineering–so it warms my heart to hear that's how you first came to the essay/speech).
- pclowes 1y agoThank you for all your work! I have several Stripe Press books, especially enjoyed Revolt of the Public and Pieces of the Action.
- coffeemug 1y agoWhen I met you at Stripe you seemed to me the person with strategic foresight and iron discipline— the kind that gets endless opportunities without even trying. I was hopelessly floundering by comparison, and not in a good Kevin Kelly way. I don’t know if people will think of you in 300 years (the day is young!) but you were definitely a role model for what discipline and great execution look like.
- ashwinsundar 1y agoI always wondered why Stripe Press was a thing. Why was a financial services company publishing books about the lives of great engineers? I'm very happy you did though, the books themselves are a great read, not to mention they are very beautiful. I really liked "The Dream Machine" in particular Why did you want to start Stripe Press in the first place? How did you get the support to do it?
- chr15m 1y agoThanks for sharing this, great article! You describe a way of living that is probably much more common than the ramen scurvy CEO lifestyle, but it doesn't get written about because people want to read about financial success and winning at zero sum games. The typical "success" archetype is often at the peak of some hierarchy (e.g. CEO) where the vast majority in the game literally cannot occupy the top positions. So in those situations most participants are losers. Sounds like you found a way to quietly opt out of that framing of success e.g. in your time at Stripe. Thank you for normalizing shiny object syndrome floundering!
- gkanai 1y agoRelated to Kevin Kelly, if you want to hear from Kelly's collaborator in the walks, Craig Mod was recently interviewed by Tim Ferriss (episode #803).
- natalyarostova 1y ago[flagged]
- cjbohlman 1y agoReally enjoyed reading this article, thank you! Reminds me a lot of Ryan Norbauer's writings (https://ryan.norbauer.com/journal/the-outsider-option-why-i-sold-half-my-company-to-tiny/ https://ryan.norbauer.com/journal/the-outsider-option-why-i-...) on why he sold half his company and the satisfaction he got from being able to focus on doing the work that he considered fun. I hope to engage my interests and hobbies in this way, super thankful that I have the opportunity to try.
- AIorNot 1y agoThis so much! great article and Kelly sounds like the type of person I would love to meet.. - having just endured time in a startup that was all about PMF, metrics and the 'growth flywheel', that pushed aside human intuition and creativity in place of 'winning'. It's indeed such a waste of humanity that the Reid hoffman's and Bezos's of the world can push inhuman cultural tropes of "winning" over our humanity. Just who is winning, the board, the VCs certainly not the person who loses his soul? On top of that, in today's world AI Slop and social media and lunatic linkedin influencers pushing those same memes hyped to eleven by AI tools, relentlessly on young founders and engineers via push notifications. day and night -what message do we deliver to ourselves?. Amazon for all its technical chops and innovation and LinkedIn are anti-patterns in that regard. Do not follow. Also, its too bad that silicon valley is so ageist that the lessons and wisdom of the older generation tend to get forgotten or cast aside-wish that we could at least take advantage of capitalism in our culture instead of it taking advantage of us When we lose the pleasure of finding things out, going with our passions and intution and lose our love of creativity and invention, curiosity, patience and empathy we loose who we are as a human in society
- dannyobrien 1y agoJust after I took on my new role, I wrote to Kevin Kelly and asked if I could meet him (I assumed he wouldn't know who I was, even though we've met informally, but he did). I wanted to talk to him about talking about how to be optimistic about technology. At my heart, I still remain positive about the contributions and opportunities of technology, but I've increasingly struggled to know how to convey, qualify or transmit that. He immediately accepted, I visited him in his tower, and we had a great, sprawling conversation. Like this author, he renewed my confidence in that framing, and the importance of it existing in the world. That single conversation has kept me going more than anything else over the last three or so years. I realise in reading this, that I never wrote after the fact to say thanks for that: so, thanks, KK, for everything.
- flir 1y agoSince you're here, can I ask if you're still writing/publishing anywhere? Long-time fan. (Alternative comment: I think oblomovka's down).
- dannyobrien 1y agoi am! oblomovka runs off a machine on my desk, which tends to crash whenever I walk out of my house, like today. However, this is an excellent notification that I'm now writing enough to maybe make it a bit more resilient. (For real dannyobrien completists, I also write small more regular email newsletter at https://buttondown.com/dannyob https://buttondown.com/dannyob of my work within the Filecoin Extended Cinematic Universe (which includes IPFS, libp2p, iroh, Bluesky, Spritely Institute, Guardian Project, Internet Archive, Prelinger Archive, DWeb Community, Foresight Institute, EFF, Muckrock, etc see https://ffdweb.org/projects https://ffdweb.org/projects , https://fil.org/ecosystem-explorer https://fil.org/ecosystem-explorer , https://directory.plnetwork.io/projects?focusAreas=Digital+Human+Rights%7CPublic+Goods%7CDevelop+Advanced+Technologies https://directory.plnetwork.io/projects?focusAreas=Digital+H... ). It's pretty lowkey though.
- flir 1y agoMany thanks for the links, I'll dig into them. > oblomovka runs off a machine on my desk, which tends to crash whenever I walk out of my house Your essay on moving to the edge when everyone else is moving to the centre had a big effect on me at the time. I think it was prescient.
- egypturnash 1y agoIs this a story about Kevin Kelly or is this an autobiography? It purports to be the former but it's largely about the author's work history. It sort of gestures vaguely at being an interview with Kevin but there's only about four paragraphs in the entire article that contain quotes from him in response to things the author asked, and most of these are about his collection of knick-knacks. I kept on waiting for a series of questions that acted as springboards for long responses from Kelly that included him talking about the value of an approach to work that he calls "flounder mode" but they never came; the only appearance of "flounder" is in the title. It's an extended intro to an interview that never actually comes. You talked with Kelly all day and hooray, great for you meeting one of your idols! But you barely tell us a single thing he said.
- deepGem 1y agoI first thought this is about Kevin Kelly. Then somewhere midway I thought I was reading an autobiography. It was only towards the latter half that I realized this is the author talking about Kevin Kelly and visiting his house. Even though the language is very simple, the writing is quite convoluted.
- ashwinsundar 1y agoIf you want a list of quotes by Kevin Kelly, I'm sure they are just a Google search away. Sometimes, the reader has to do a little work - in this case, to determine what 'Flounder' means. Perhaps it means just that, which is to fumble around awkwardly, kinda like a fish out of water? It's kind of a murky word, and we don't really know how to use it in a sentence. It actually matches the whole tone of the article pretty well, especially when the author talks about how they may have made a huge mistake with their career by bouncing around and trying whatever seems interesting.
- zombiwoof 1y agoK I thought I was crazy but you nailed it . What did I just read
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
- gleenn 1y ago"G-Chat with Charleton, in which he would interview Google executives while sitting with them in a two-person snuggie." What a sight that must have been haha
- blendo 1y agoHe's quite religious: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2011/07/geektheologian/ https://www.christianitytoday.com/2011/07/geektheologian/
- yeeetz 1y agoMany successful American tech founders and entrepreneurs have strong religious or spiritual beliefs — I believe it's part of the unique competitive advantage and edge in this industry
- Quarrel 1y agoMany successful American tech founders and entrepreneurs don't have strong religious or spiritual beliefs. Both are true. I think finding self-motivation in life is important, particularly for entrepreneurs, but there are many sources. I've never thought the SV / San Fran scene was particularly religious. I'd have guessed religion was under-represented there compared to the rest of the US.
- iddan 1y agoSpirituality doesn’t have to be religion and most certainly not an Abrahamic religion.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoThere's often more overlap with plain old Prosperity Gospel Protestantism than many people realise - especially in the sense that the definition of success is likely to be narrow, material, and individual. There's usually a lot more "I'm entitled to love and money and I will wish them into existence for me personally" than "I think everyone should have good affordable public healthcare, so I will work hard towards making that happen."
- corry 1y agoAs an outsider but someone who spent a fair bit of time there in the tech scene, it seems like there's a really interesting piece waiting to be written about the juxtaposition of SF/SV culture (tech hedonism, psychedelics, affluence, utopian thinking, dislike of authority, social justice) and a seeming rise in leaders being openly religious (usually Christian). Or maybe it was always there and now it's just more obvious since you can scroll a big name VC's IG account and see him posting Bible verses from his SoMa office. I find it actually kind of nice that these things are mixing. Maybe the world is poorer if people with different metaphysical beliefs completely self-segregate into closed communities, especially during these times of great change where our understanding of consciousness, physics, AI, and everything else is rapidly undermining a lot traditional positions on both sides of the aisle.
- kaiwenwang 1y agoAs a young person in the United States, the main concern is that if you aren't one of the greatest at what you do, you'll be doomed to a life of increasing poverty: food derived from vegetable oils and chemically bleached wheat, apartments of grey laminate flooring and concrete, crime, people who derive their actions from social media, a 60 minute commute---as the real world: nature, people who are present, quality food, becomes increasingly out of reach.
- chr15m 1y ago"the greatest at what you do" is by definition a zero sum framing that will lead 99.999% of participants to view their lives as a failure. It is literally madness to make this your goal. The alternative is to choose to be very good at what you do, which has a good chance of success if you try hard at something you care about.
- kaiwenwang 1y agoI feel like very good isn't enough as employers want the best candidates but not the average candidates, and if you're sort of in the middle then the so-so companies don't want you either because they think you'll leave. Something about the increased social stratification of our times, which also has to do with increased transportation and communication. Might also depend on your locale. Plumber in Germany might be better than SWE in Texas.
- chr15m 1y agoHiring is not a zero sum game (growth of the company/economy through good hiring means more positions are created). I've hired software developers before and what I was looking for was somebody who commits code that works and is good quality. I don't care about their ranking on some imaginary programmer hierarchy. You probably don't want to work at a company where they do.
- kaiwenwang 1y agoNo, not a fan of Leetcode either, nor imaginary measures of social prestige. We may not necessarily disagree with any of each other's points, but lack of mutual context and having different lived experience makes our words have different meaning.
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- mindwok 1y agoA very cathartic read. I enjoyed this, and I really related to the author's anxieties. Our economics has created a collective belief that if you aren't trying to be the best at playing the game, then you will be left behind in poverty. Mediocrity is shunned in Silicon Valley, and the rise of social media has only inflated that idea. We're increasingly checking our humanity at the door so we can be great, and sacrifice ourselves at the altar of capitalism. For what? So we can look ourselves in the mirror and believe we are one of the special chosen ones?
- cushychicken 1y agoThere's a lot to love about this. I particularly like feeling like you need permission to show optimism and enthusiasm about your work. I also particularly like this bit: “Greatness is overrated,” he said, and I perked up. “It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan is a jerk.” ...but mostly out of a sense of confirmation bias. It's nice to know that there are smart, accomplished people out there who share my view that Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan are jerks. One thing this helped crystallize for me, in my position as a nascent team leader, is the position that: "If something about your daily work sucks, let's talk about it. That's the first step to seeing if we can fix it." This seems like - not a panacea? But a solid strategy to help uncover many problems in an organization. Enjoyed the read. Thanks for posting.
- endymion-light 1y agoThat's a great attitude to have I think. It's definitely something that I was guilty of really early into the development idea, sleepness nights, 80 hour weeks, this idea that greatness must be achieved. But actually, chilling out, taking time to think about where you actually want to be past accolades and achievements is really important.
- srean 1y agoMy first thought looking at those magnificent mellow glow photographs -- how does he manage to keep all that dust free. Beautiful read.
- robertritz 1y agoHired help. Does wonders for stress.
- jebarker 1y agoI too would like to hear more from people with similar approaches to work, career and technology to KK. However, it seems like there’s a large amount of survivorship bias at play when people talk about just following their interests and it leading to financial security and work freedom.
- spyckie2 1y agoIt’s not quite about following your interest. It’s learning how to take an interest in your interests, IMO. Basically if you pursue your interest half heartedly or without the rigor and discipline that you would under pressure of work, you would probably never do anything interesting with your interests. But if you held yourself to the same standard of excellence in your interests that you do in work, then your interests will take on a quality that allows it to stand on its own.
- robertritz 1y agoMeh I took a serious left turn after college and my first few jobs. Much happier now. Work on Capitol Hill for less than a year then tech outsourcing then consulting. Realized it was boring, useless, and mind numbing and moved across the world. Now have multiple businesses, more than 30 employees across those business, and I get to have fun. It's stressful sometimes but I think we've kicked the stress finally (at 37). Now it's just fun and we get to see what we can pull off when we want to. Most people simply quit or aren't willing to do the uncomfortable things. It's uncomfortable to be unbothered. But I certainly didn't follow my interests. I used my interests to get better at what was in front of us. Gotta pay the bills and give people what they want, I just put my own spin on it.
- riehwvfbk 1y agoHumblebrag much? Do you think your employees are where they are in life because they aren't willing to do uncomfortable things? Or because they follow their interests too much?
- financltravsty 1y ago
- nathanbarry 1y agoI love everything that Colossus puts out. Thanks for sharing this one!
- joshdavham 1y agoI really appreciated hearing about the author’s journey and relating it to my own so far. It was only about two years ago that I was obsessed with the idea of starting my own ambitious startup and “conquering the world”, but I’m now moreso considering the idea that I can have a significant positive impact on the world through building and contributing to software in a more “pro-bono” way. As kk said in the article: > “I think one of the least interesting reasons to be interested in something is money,”
- whiplash451 1y agoVery inspiring read. A non-trivial application of it if you work in a fairly big org and the product roadmap is non-existent/uninspiring: in such context, you will often find exciting projects/revenue streams in the cracks of the system/market, not by waiting for the product/strategy team to come up with these exciting venues (pro tip: they won't) Find some interest in your current product and go hard after it.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y agoGemini summary: The article "Flounder Mode" on JoinColossus.com, while ostensibly about Kevin Kelly and a concept called "flounder mode," is primarily an autobiographical reflection by the author on their own career and life philosophy. The author describes their journey through various roles and experiences, from working on Capitol Hill to tech outsourcing and consulting, and ultimately to building multiple businesses. They touch upon themes of finding purpose, opting out of traditional success metrics (like reaching the top of a corporate hierarchy), and the importance of pursuing one's interests even if it feels "uncomfortable" or lacking immediate structure. Despite the title, direct quotes and extended insights from Kevin Kelly on "flounder mode" are minimal. The article's core message seems to be that success can be found by embracing a less linear, more explorative approach to one's career, much like a "floundering" fish might move around until it finds its way. The author suggests that this "flounder mode" involves an openness to trying different things, even if they don't immediately seem to lead to a clear path, and that this can ultimately lead to more fulfilling and interesting work.
- vessenes 1y agoDownvoted. Anyone who wants Gemini’s take on this is capable of getting it; what’s hard is finding thoughts from other people of interest. Please don’t post these.
- vessenes 1y agoBrie, great essay, and salient - thank you! I had a similar set of feelings getting to know John Seeley Brown; another legend albeit slightly older than KK. Reading his bio on his website once just put me at ease; his interests were so varied and the work he’d done was so interesting, but the through line was just .. him, a person and his interests. I once asked him about his career and he was very uncomfortable with the idea in any sense - he was like “Do I have a career?” I’d like a follow up from you in ten years, though: or maybe a counterpoint about someone else: I’ve recently been mulling over what parts of “just follow your interests” is a super power and what part is just ADD/an excuse for not getting through the boring parts that lead to long term impact: right now my self review is I should have settled down a little. Thanks again! Fun to read about you and Kevin and see those awesome photos.
- mathgeek 1y ago> an excuse for not getting through the boring parts that lead to long term impact Personally I don't worry too much about long term impact. It's incredibly hard to actually predict what will have an impact after you're gone, and the world will have forgotten about approximately all of us in a hundred years or so. Instead, I focus on the idea that folks happily engaged in useful work produce useful things.
- richardatlarge 1y agoAs a potter, when I open my gas fired kiln, I hope for one piece I really love. That’s enough. I think success is in the moment of experience. Maybe an effective passage in one of my novels. Just a diet of the small things. Above and beyond that, we lose control over what’s good, great, bad, or important. We don’t see the true consequences of most of what we do.